Rob Lowe recently shared a fascinating anecdote about his time on the set of the 1983 film The Outsiders. According to Lowe, his costar Tom Cruise got a tad too enthusiastic during their friendly boxing sessions.
During an interview on “The Rich Eisen Show,” the 60-year-old actor reminisced, “He’s so competitive that we used to box in the hallway of the hotel we were staying at during Outsiders. So much testosterone!”
Lowe explained that he and his fellow cast members, including the 62-year-old Cruise, would don headgear and mouthpieces and genuinely spar with one another. “We’re 18-year-old guys stuck on location. … And I just remember, Tom was jacked, and I had pipe cleaner arms,” Lowe recalled with a smile. “Tom is, like, this beast, but I hit him real clean, and I rang his bell. The next thing I knew, I woke up on the floor. He, like, completely knocked me out.”
Lowe added that after Cruise landed the punch, his “eyes just went black.” He compared the experience to a scene straight out of Fight Club, saying, “But that’s the stuff we did. That’s what guys do.”
Interestingly, this wasn’t the first time Lowe discussed Cruise’s intensity. On Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast back in April 2020, he revealed that Cruise went “ballistic” upon learning they would share a hotel room during the audition process for The Outsiders.
Lowe reminisced, “The notion that an 18-year-old actor with a walk-on part in Endless Love and, like, a seventh lead in Taps could have that kind of wherewithal? I remember going, ‘Wow, this guy is the real deal.’ I mean, it made me laugh, it was gnarly … but at the end of the day, you can’t argue with the results. He’s had his eye on the ball since day one.”
Both Lowe and Cruise starred as Sodapop Curtis and Steve Randle in the coming-of-age film, joined by other notable actors like Emilio Estevez, C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Ralph Macchio, and Diane Lane. In February, the film’s director Francis Ford Coppola shared some behind-the-scenes video footage from the auditions.
Coppola, now 85, captioned the Instagram clip, “42 years ago we cast The Outsiders in a unique way. We had all the actors together on a soundstage and would alternate different actors reading for different roles. It was interesting because each of them was watching their competition, so while it could’ve been a volatile situation, it turned into a very positive one. There emerged the natural respect and sense of colleagueship among them. The result worked beautifully and reminded me of my days as a camp counselor.”
Lowe, feeling nostalgic, commented on the post, “Feels like this was just yesterday,” while Macchio, who portrayed Johnny Cade, expressed his gratitude to Coppola and S.E. Hinton, who authored the novel that the film was based on, saying, “These auditions and this film experience still inform me today. Thank you, Francis (and Susie) ❤️.”
Adding to the legacy of the film, The Outsiders has recently been transformed into a Broadway musical, winning four Tony Awards, including Best New Musical, in June. Macchio attended a performance of the show last month and posed for photos with the cast. Sky Lakota-Lynch, who takes on the role that Macchio originally played, shared a heartfelt photo with the Karate Kid actor on Instagram.
